Nineteen
The garage doors were up.
The car was already being loaded.
Nick went inside for another bag, passing Quinn, who was on her way out with more luggage, just as an old truck drove past the house. Quinn paid no attention to it, but the driver was certainly looking at her.
Anton grinned.
It was the troublesome redhead—and she was all alone. This was a gift from the Universe today. Without giving himself time to think his actions through, he turned up into the driveway, intentionally blocking their car from leaving as he put the truck in Park with the engine still running.
Quinn tossed her bag into the trunk of Nick’s car just as she heard the vehicle pulling up behind her. She turned and saw an older man getting out of an old beat-up truck. She didn’t recognize him, but the expression on his face was unsettling, as was the way he’d blocked them in. Her gut told her she was in danger.
She moved on instinct, reaching behind her back for the Beretta in the waistband of her jeans. In the same moment, Quinn saw his arm come up, got a glimpse of the gun in his hand, but swung hers around and fired first, hitting the sombrero as it went flying off of his head. She dropped to the floor of the garage, lying flat as his shot went wild, hitting the back tire of Nick’s car.
Quinn fired a second shot, and the man ducked behind the door of the truck for protection and began firing into the garage.
Quinn was on her belly against the wall when Nick came flying out of the house, shooting.
His first shot burned the side of the man’s chest; the second got him in the shoulder. He leaped into the truck, yanked the gearshift into Reverse and stomped the accelerator. The squeal of tires and the scent of burning rubber filled the garage as the old man backed out of the drive, shifted gears and sped away.
Nick turned in a panic to check on Quinn, but she was already scrambling to her feet.
“I’m okay,” she shouted, as Nick turned to give chase, running into the street quick enough to get off one shot before the truck turned a corner.
But just as Nick shot, a young teenager came around the corner on a bicycle, swerved to miss the speeding truck and skidded sideways as he fell.
There was a split second of panic when Nick thought the kid might have been hit, and he watched in fear as the boy rolled over and crawled up into a yard and hid behind a bushy shrub.
Nick ran toward him, praying with every step as he got to the yard, and yanked the kid out of the bushes.
“D-Man... Donny...are you okay?” he cried.
The boy was shaking, but was nodding yes.
Nick threw his arms around him.
“Thank God you’re okay. Get your bike and go home. This neighborhood is about to become a crime scene.”
The boy ran toward his bike, limping as he went, and pedaled away as fast as he could.
Nick turned to go back toward his house when he began hearing sirens, and to his horror, he saw Quinn coming out of the garage on her Harley.
“No, Quinn, no!” Nick shouted, waving his arms to stop her. But she swerved around him, shouting as she went.
“Track me on the app,” she yelled and sped away.
“Lord have mercy,” he said and started running back to his house.
It wasn’t until he got into the garage that he saw his back tire had exploded. He heard the first patrol cars arriving on scene and ran back into the street to flag them down.
The first car slid to a stop as Nick flashed his badge.
“Detective Saldano, Homicide. I’ve got a woman in pursuit of a man who just tried to kill her. She’s chasing him on a motorcycle.”
“Get in!” the patrolman shouted, and Nick jumped into the car as the cop radioed to the cars behind him that they were going into pursuit.
Nick pulled the app up on his phone, and almost immediately, he had a map of the city and a swiftly moving blip.
“That way!” he said.
The cop took off again, running with lights and sirens, and less than a block away, two more patrol cars followed suit.
* * *
Anton was in so much pain he could hardly think. His side was burning, and the shot he’d taken in his shoulder had clearly broken something. He could no longer raise his arm.
He was driving the old truck as fast as it would go through neighborhood streets, barely missing pedestrians, running through stop signs, hitting the back end of a car going through an intersection, but he never once slowed down.
It had been years since he’d been this afraid, and it was not a memory he enjoyed thinking about. He’d killed an old woman for her car and money—a pitiful crime, one he was never proud of. That was nearly forty years ago and a continent away, but now he was running in fear again, only this time he was bleeding, and time was running out.
He knew the moment he got shot where he would have to go. To the TomCat Club—his first whorehouse and the place where he’d amassed his first fortune. Delilah would hide him and the truck, and his girls there were loyal. He would be safe and he could heal, but there were fifteen miles between him and the club, and he was bleeding like a son of a bitch.
“No cops, no cops, no cops,” he kept saying, as if turning that into a mantra would make it real.
He saw the street up ahead that would take him out of Vegas toward the TomCat and tried to go faster, but the old truck was already smoking and shaking.
“No cops, no cops, no cops,” he repeated and took the turn.
* * *
Quinn didn’t think, she just reacted when she realized that son of a bitch was going to get away. It had to be Anton Baba. No one else wanted her dead, and when he shot at her, something in her snapped. She had been a victim too many times in her life, but no more. She ran for the Harley, jammed the helmet over her head and swung her leg over the bike.
Even though it hadn’t been ridden in days, it started like a charm. She patted her pocket to make sure Nick’s cell phone was still there, checked quickly to make sure it was on and then flew out of the garage after the truck.
Nick was running back toward the house—toward her. She knew he was going to try to stop her, but she didn’t have time to explain.
“Follow me on the tracking app,” she yelled and then accelerated through the streets trying to catch a glimpse of that truck.
It wasn’t until she realized she was following a trail of wrecked cars and skid marks through intersections that she guessed she might be on the right path.
She saw the smoke coming from the tailpipe first and then noticed the truck up ahead and breathed a sigh of relief. It was him. She didn’t know where he was going, but figured he was trying to get out of Vegas as quickly as possible. Her best bet was to try to catch up with him and shoot out his tires. That would stop him, and hopefully Nick and the cops would be right behind her.
She made a point to stay about a half block behind, waiting and waiting for police cars to appear so she could make her move, but it didn’t happen.
Between trying to keep up with Baba and watching for cops, she’d ridden all the way out of the city before she realized how far they’d gone.
Nick! Nick, where are you?
The traffic was heavy on the road out of town, which helped to keep Baba in her sights with just enough cover to hopefully go unnoticed. She didn’t want to catch him without backup, so she just kept up the chase, driving straight into the heat waves rising up above the highway.
When he suddenly veered off the highway onto a smaller road leading out into the desert, she had no choice but to follow or lose him. If she followed, he would see her then, for sure. She didn’t know what he would do when he realized she was behind him, but she had her gun and a full clip of ammo. It was time to make a move. If she could get close enough before he noticed her, she’d end this race right now.
She leaned forward, lowering her body to counteract wind resistance, and accelerated even more. There was a knot in her belly and a hot sun burning down her back.
God help me.
* * *
The relief of exiting the highway onto the county road was huge. In less than ten minutes he’d be at TomCat’s and sanctuary. He imagined the look of dismay on Delilah’s face and knew she would take care of him.
He was light-headed from blood loss and pain, but he would get well and get out of the country. It no longer mattered as much about losing this empire. Empires were made to be lost and won. He built it up once. He could do it again somewhere else. This wasn’t the end for him, he was certain.
Until he glanced in the side-view mirror and his heart nearly stopped.
“What the fuck?”
It was a biker—directly on his tail. There was always the chance that this guy was just some customer heading to the TomCat, but something about the way the bike moved suggested an urgency that worried Anton. He accelerated, but the truck was already at its maximum speed, so he just concentrated on driving it with one hand.
Another minute passed, and he glanced in the mirror again. The biker was closer—and now he could see long red hair beneath the helmet.
The redhead?
“No fucking way,” he muttered, reaching for his gun before being overcome with a shooting pain—a violent reminder that his right arm was out of commission.
He glanced down and stifled a gasp at the sight of himself.
He was sitting in blood. Blood was everywhere.
The biker was coming closer and closer, and his panic was climbing with every second. He would not, by God, be brought down by some woman.
He heard a sound, something like a pop, and quickly realized she was shooting at him.
“No, no, no!” he shrieked as he heard another pop, then two more, and just like that, she’d flattened both his back tires.
One moment he was on the road and the next he was in the sand and frantically steering from side to side to keep from rolling.
He caught a glimpse of motion out the window beside him, saw the biker, red hair flying from under the helmet, and the gun in her hand was pointed straight at him. He hit the brakes. It was a mistake.
The truck rolled twice, coming to a stop upside down in the dirt.
The bike’s tires squealed as she also hit the brakes, did a one-eighty on the blacktop and then killed the engine and dismounted, running toward his truck.
The glass in all the windows was gone, and he was struggling to move around inside the cab, hurt and disoriented and trying to find a way out.
“Give me your hand!” the woman shouted at him as she reached inside the front window.
He took the offer gladly, his desire to live stronger than his desire to kill her, and grabbed on to her wrist with one hand.
The woman grabbed on to him with both hands and began pulling him backward. The truck was beginning to smoke, he noticed with cold panic.
“Hurry!” he shrieked. “It’s burning!”
He was in so much pain he could barely move, but she kept pulling and pulling until the upper half of his body was free.
Something inside the truck burst into flames.
* * *
“Don’t let me burn!” Baba screamed in panic.
Despite her hatred for this man, she was not about to let him die. He deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison, not death, no matter how gruesome. She dug her heels in the sand and leaned backward, just as she began to hear sirens in the distance.
“Finally,” she muttered and pulled harder.
The flames were higher now, and Baba was screaming nonstop. The woman was struggling with his weight when all of a sudden there were men beside her.
Someone grabbed her around the waist.
“Run!” Nick shouted, as he pulled her away from the fire.
Hearing his voice was the most beautiful sound, but it was the panic she heard that made her lengthen her stride.
Behind them, more cops had pulled Baba out and were dragging him through the desert as they ran from the crash.
When the truck exploded into flames, the force of the blast knocked all of them down. The cops were immediately back on their feet and pulling Baba a safer distance away.
Nick rose up on one elbow, looked down at the bloody smears on her face, the dirt on her clothes and the smell of smoke in her hair, then shook his head and covered her lips with a groan, kissing her over and over as if he would never get enough.
Quinn felt the fear in his touch and the desperation in his kiss as she put her arms around his neck.
After another minute, he finally pulled himself away, then stood up and lifted her to her feet.
“Bloody hell, Queenie. I have never been so scared in my life. You took ten years off my life just now. Promise me...don’t ever do this again.”
“I’m sorry I scared you, but I thought he was getting away. I didn’t want to live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I’m so tired of being afraid.”
Nick shook his head and then pulled her close in a shaky embrace.
“You rode that Harley like a bat out of hell. The team will be talking about that for years.”
She shrugged and then turned around to look at the scene, making sure the bike was far enough away from the fire, and it was. Then she saw the body on the ground.
“Is he still alive?” she asked.
“I don’t know but we can find out.”
An ambulance was coming toward them in the distance.
“Here comes his ride,” Nick said.
Quinn kept walking until she reached the spot where he lay stretched out upon the ground. He was moaning and mumbling, begging for help. Someone had applied some kind of field dressing to his side while another held a pressure bandage to his shoulder.
She stopped at his feet and then stood there for a moment, just staring at him. The ambulance was getting closer. They were going to do their best to save him, but she was wishing him dead.
His eyelids fluttered, then opened. And then he was staring straight at her face.
A rage swept through her as he moaned and then closed his eyes.
“Hey!” she shouted and kicked the bottom of his boot, startling everyone, including Anton himself.
His eyes came open.
“You!” he said.
“Yes, it’s me!” Quinn said. “You get a real good look and remember I’m the one who pulled you out of that fire.”
“After you shot out my tires,” he cried.
“After you tried to kill me! Now shut up and listen,” Quinn countered. “If you don’t die here today, you’ll be seeing my face again in court, and you better pray to God that they put you in prison for life, because if I ever see you loose on the streets again I will shoot you without hesitation. And when I do, I won’t hit your hat again. That bullet will land right between your eyes.”
Anton coughed and turned his head toward the nearby cops.
“You heard her threaten me,” he cried, as though there was any chance he would appear innocent in all of this.
Nick kicked the bottom of Anton’s other shoe.
“I didn’t hear a thing.”
Anton frantically looked at the cops around him, but they were looking up the road.
“The ambulance is here,” one of them said, pointing over Nick’s shoulder.
Nick put his arm around Quinn and waited on the scene until Baba was gone.
“That was quite the promise you just made him,” he said, tilting her chin up so he could look at her. “If you want him dead, why pull him from the truck when you could have left him to die?”
Quinn closed her eyes, thinking a moment before answering. “Part of me wants him dead—but that’s mostly the angry, scared part of me. The rest of me wants him to answer for his crimes, for what he’s done to so many women over the years—not just to me.”
Nick pulled her close, knowing with more certainty than ever that this was the woman of his dreams.
A couple of cops were stringing crime-scene tape around the truck when Quinn started to come down from the adrenaline rush.
“How long do we have to be here?” she asked.
“Until we’ve given our statements for sure, unless they let us come down to the precinct tomorrow to do it.”
“Then I need to sit down.”
Her face was white beneath the dirt as he picked her up in his arms and carried her over to one of the patrol cars. The engine was still running, the air-conditioning blasting cool air as he put her in the back seat.
“Wait in here where it’s cooler, baby. I’m going to go see what I can do to speed this up.”
She was already curling up on the back seat as he closed the door. He glanced in the window to make sure she was okay, then jogged over to one of the cops.
“Hey, Quinn was feeling faint. I just put her in the back seat of your patrol car.”
The cop grinned.
“I’d feel faint, too, if I’d been on a Harley for ten miles in this heat chasing down the man who tried to kill me. Baba said she shot out his back tires.”
Nick shook his head. “She’s never been one to back away from trouble. I guess he finally pissed her off enough to take action.”
“It’s all that red hair,” the cop said, then clapped Nick on the shoulder. “I see you two have a thing going...so, congratulations. She seems like a great lady, but I feel obligated to warn you—don’t make her mad.”
Nick grinned.
“Duly noted.”
* * *
Star was doing her daily best to reestablish a normal life back in her hometown of Nashville, but it still felt strange. Part of the time it almost felt like the last seven years was a nightmare that didn’t really happen, and then she’d catch a glimpse of Sammy, and it would all come flooding back.
Right now, she was alone in her parents’ house except for Sammy, and it felt good to be in control of the space, even if it was temporary.
Her mother had gone to the supermarket, and she had just put a pan of sugar cookies in the oven.
Sammy was standing at the kitchen door, looking out into the backyard, where his grandpa John was on the riding lawn mower cutting grass. He banged on the glass, clearly wanting a ride.
Starla turned around.
“Sammy. No hitting the door, please.”
He whacked it again, yelling, “I ride, I ride.”
“Sammy! What did I just say?” she said, this time in a sterner voice.
He stopped, patted the Plexiglas in an apologetic way and then toddled over to the counter and hugged her leg.
“Mama not mad at me,” he said.
She dropped to her knees.
“No. I’m not mad, sweetheart. But you can’t hit things like that. They might break, okay?”
“’Kay,” he said and pointed at the oven. “Cookies for me.”
She scooped him up in her arms with a laugh.
“Cookies for everyone but not until they are through baking.”
He patted his hands on her cheeks and smiled.
An overwhelming rush of love washed through her as she cuddled him close.
“I sure do love you,” she said.
“Love you!” he said and patted her cheeks again.
She was still smiling when the phone began to ring. She set him down and pointed at his toys beneath the window.
“Go play,” she said and then ran for the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hey, sis, it’s Justin.”
She turned toward the window to watch Sammy as she talked.
“It’s so good to hear your voice,” she said.
“I have some really good news for you,” he said.
She grinned. “I could always use good news. Spill it.”
“Anton Baba is in a hospital, officially under arrest, and if he doesn’t die from his wounds he’ll soon be behind bars.”
“Oh, my God!” Star gasped. “How did they find him? Why is he in the hospital?”
“Remember that woman, Quinn O’Meara, who found Sammy out in the desert and brought him into Vegas?”
“Yes. She saved his life. She was in the hospital. Is she all right?”
“All right enough to be the one who took him down. It’s a long story, and I don’t have much time, but I wanted to let you know that you’re safe. His empire is imploding. That Stewart guy who first kidnapped you and sold you to Baba is dead, and they’re laying that at Baba’s feet, too. You are free from everything now but bad memories. I just wish I could get rid of those for you, too.”
Star started to cry.
“Will I have to still testify in court?”
“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t count on it. I’m betting Baba will try to make some deal with the Feds and go straight to prison.”
“But won’t that mean he gets out early?”
“Besides everything they already have on him, they now have him for Stewart’s murder and two attempted murder charges for trying to kill Quinn O’Meara. He will never see freedom again, I promise you that.”
Tears were rolling now.
“Thank you, Justin. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything.”
“Hey, kid, no tears. I love you. What else would I do? Listen, I gotta go. Tell Mom and Dad I said hi. I’ll call them this weekend.”
“I will,” she said and hung up.
Sammy saw her tears from across the room and came running, patting her leg to be lifted up. She picked him up and kissed his little round cheek.
“Mama is okay,” she said. “Happy tears. These are happy tears.”
The timer went off at the stove.
“And cookies are done!” she cried.
“Cookies done!” Sammy shrieked and wiggled out of her lap.
“Nope, too hot to eat now,” she said. “Go play. We’ll eat cookies later.”
Sammy still followed her to the stove, watched her putting the cookies on a rack to cool, and then when he felt the heat from the oven, he backed away with a frown and went back to play.
A short while later her dad came in through the kitchen door.
“Wow, something sure smells good in here,” he said, as he gave her a hug.
“Cookies, Papa!” Sammy shrieked.
John scooped him up, laughing.
“How many has he already had?”
“None yet.”
“Well, heck fire, boy! Let me wash my hands and we’ll both have a cookie, okay?”
“Heck fire! Wash my hands!” Sammy yelled.
John grimaced.
“Sorry about that.”
Star just shook her head.
“Go. Wash. Eat. I have news.”
John poked Sammy in the belly just to make him laugh, and then both of them headed to the bathroom to clean up.
Star took a deep breath and felt a huge wave of relief sweep through her as she counted out her blessings.
The staples were out of her back.
Her wounds were healing.
She and Sammy were safe.
They were home.
She couldn’t wish for anything more. Then she heard Sammy’s chatter and her father’s laugh.
She wiped her face one last time and lifted her chin.
“Cookie time,” she said. Man, did she have a tale to tell.